The reason I choose this book is very uncomplicated. It is very intriguing, and the characters are very in-depth. The story has a great combination of good and evil, with a good sense of a romance. I could hardly put it down because of its ability to get into the story.
Genres:
This book can be classified in two different genres. These genres being speculative fiction and a romance. The Tale of Despereaux is a speculative fiction because it deals with the idea of personification to rats and mice. DiCamillo personifies these animals with the use of modern day english language. As most people know, mice and rats are incapable of speaking the language that we can understand. They can't even speak any language created by Homo Sapiens. They do have a language, but we cannot understand it. She also personifies the mice with her use of "The Mouse Council". This reminds most readers as a form of The Supreme Court Justice, which is in the American Government. Mice do not have a supreme intellect and cannot create a sort of government to do this, making this book a speculative fiction. This book is also a romance in the way of Despereaux, the main character who is a mouse, falls in love with the Princess, Pea (Princess Pea). The book would have no plot if Despereaux had not fallen in love with the Princess Pea. His love carries him throughout the story and compels his adventure, making this book, also, a romance. This obviously could never happen in real life, still making it a fiction
Summary:
This book actually is very good and keeps you drawn in. Despereaux Tilling, the protagonist, is a castle-born mouse who was born with his eyes opened, which was unusual. He also has very large ears and is undersized. On top of not looking like a normal mouse, he doesn't act like one either. He hates scurrying, and instead of chewing the glue off of paper in books, he reads the books instead. In particular, a book about a knight in shining armor that saves a princess, and it begins with "Once upon a time...", which is one of Despereaux inspirations. While re-reading this story, he hears a sound that he refers to as "honey". This sound is the King playing the guitar to his daughter, the Princess Pea. Despereaux is so intrigued by this that he exposes himself to them by sitting at the foot of the King. When Pea spots him, she starts talking to him. After talking for a few seconds, the King notices him and becomes enraged. So enraged that he starts stomping his foot at him. This scares Despereaux, so he runs back to a hole in a wall, and while running back, yells "My name is Despereaux!". After this, Despereaux falls in love with her. What he doesn't know, is that his brother, Furlough, has tuned him into the Mouse Council for exposing himself to a human. The next day, while Despereaux is reading his story again, Furlough makes him stop reading and talk to the Mouse Council. The Mouse Council says that he will have to accept the worst sentence, which is being sent down to the dungeon. Before being sent down to the dungeon, he gets a red string tied around his next. He is then lead to the dungeon to die. However, he meets the jailor, Gregory. Gregory, who has lived down there for decades, decides to derive a plan to help him escape. However, there are two other characters we must talk about. One of them being Chiaroscuro, also knows as Roscuro. Roscuro is a rat that lives in the dungeon, and rats from the dungeon are all about making people suffer. So one day, he decides to chew on the rope that is tied to Gregory the jailers ankle so Gregory can find his way through the conniving dungeon. Gregory becomes furious with him and hangs him by the tale. He teaches Roscuro a lesson by lighting a match and putting it infant of Roscuro's face, burning off on side of his whiskers. Since Roscuro is a rat and has lived in darkness his whole life, he has never seen light. This light sticks in his brain and he develops a dream to be able to get out of the dungeon and live in the light. However, he is hypnotized by his rat friend named Botticelli Remorso to not want to see the light and only to cause prisoners to suffer. So, when the next prisoner comes, light pores in, and Roscuro looks right into it. He dreams oaf light are somewhat revived, until Botticelli Remorso snaps him out of it. He then proceeds to convince the new prisoner that he is his friend after a little bit of time, he steals the only thing he has left, which is a red table cloth. He got this read table cloth in a trade he made with a man. He traded his daughter for a handful of cigarettes, a chicken, and the red table cloth. After that, Roscuro realizes that he doesn't to make people suffer. He wants light. So what he does is that he sneaks up the stairs out of the door and into the castle, where he is in awe of all of the light. It just so happens that at the same time, there is banquet going on. He looks inside the banquet room, where multiple things are bright and shinny. He then decides to climb up the chandelier in the banquet room that hangs over the dinning table. While up on it, he is spotted by the Princess Pea, who yells "A rat! A rat is hanging from the chandelier!". Nobody in the party heard her, instead of Roscuro, who was so hurt by the word "rat", that he feel from the chandelier. In fact, he fell from the chandelier right into the soup bowl of the queen, who loved soup so much thats he ate it fro every meal. As soon as she saw the rat in her soup, the queen yelled some strange noise an then screamed "There is a rat in my soup!" and promptly died on the spot. While the King was getting men to help revive her, Roscuro made his escape. However, he looked back. He looked back right at the princes, whose eyes looked like they said "Go back to the dungeon, go back to the darkness where you belong." His wife dieting hurt the King so bad that he had soup banned, bowls banned, spoons banned , and all rats to be killed. The word "rat" hurt Roscuro so much that he did not care about the light. All he cared about was revenge on the princess. He wanted revenge on pea. So he returned to the dungeon and plotted his revenge. There is one last character that is important, and that is Miggery Sow, also known as Mig. When Mig was a small girl, her mother died and her father traded her away to an abusive man who sowed her no love. All he wold do was make her cook food, clean his kettle, and tend to the sheep. He would hit her so much in the ear that she became hearing impaired and could hardly hear. One day while tending to the sheep, she saw the Queen, the King, and the Princess riding horses in the nearby fields. She was in such awe of the princess, that her new dream was to become a princess. After a few years, a man came in armor from the King to collect all spoons, bowls, and kettles, because they were all banned by the king. He also finds out that he traded Mig, which would make him the owner of Mig, which is illegal. So the man took Mig and all of her owners spoons, bowls, and his kettle to the castle, where Mig became a paid servant. She becomes friends with the princess. She also gets her new job, which is to bring food to the jailor, Gregory, in the dungeon. So, on her first day of this, she brings the food down to the jailor and he eats and. He uses his napkin and sends her away. While she is almost at the stairs, she encounter Roscuro, who convinces her that he can make her the princess. She takes him up with her and brings the tray back to the kitchen. While she is clearing the tray, she shakes out the napkin, and out tumbles Despereaux, who was hidden in the napkin. While trying to kill him she chops off his tail and he scurries away to the pantry and hides in there for ht night. Later that night, Roscuro creates a plan that will make Mig the princess. He says that they will wake the princess up and take her to the dungeon where Mig and Pea will switch rolls and Mig will be the prunes and Pea will be the servant. BUt his actual plan is to leave the princess in the darkest part of the dungeon forever. When Despereaux finds this out, he goes and gets the rest of the thimble of thread front he thread master and he also gets a needle. He then goes to the dungeon and begins his search for the Princess and become a night in shinning armor.
Characters:
Despereaux Tilling:
Despereaux is the protagonist in this book. He is unusually small, had big ears, and is easily frightened. He is also a compassionate character who wants nothing more then the love and admiration of his true love, Princess Pea. The way he falls in love with her is while he is re-reading his story, he hears a sound that he refers to as "honey". This sound is the King playing the guitar to his daughter, the Princess Pea. Despereaux is so intrigued by this that he exposes himself to them by sitting at the foot of the King. When Pea spots him, she starts talking to him. After talking for a few seconds, the King notices him and becomes enraged. So enraged that he starts stomping his foot at him. This scares Despereaux, so he runs back to a hole in a wall, and while running back, yells "My name is Despereaux!". Despereaux falls in love with the Princess and thats all he can think of.
"There is somebody who loves me, and I love her and that is the only thing that matters to me." (pg. 48)
Aside from being compassionate, Despereaux is also a brave character. After he escaped the dungeon he was brave enough to go back in, weapon in hand, and rescue the princess from the grasps of Mig and Roscuro. This is a big accomplishment for him, considering he is so skittish.
"No choice, no choice, no choice, no choice." (pg. 241)
Princess Pea:
The Princess is a very sweet character. She is kind natured towards Despereaux when she first meets him sitting at the foot of the king. She pats his head and is very gentle with him, unlike the King who the refused to play the guitar for Despereaux, saying that it is unfit for a king to be playing music for a mouse. And right he was, it was very strange...
"The Princess looked down at Despereaux. She smiled at him. And while her father played another song, a song about the deep purple falling over sleepy garden walls, the princess reached out and touched the top of the mouse's head." (pg. 30)
Chiaroscuro (Roscuro):
Roscuro seems like a very confused character. He doesn't really know why he wants until on of his character climaxes. Before Gregory, the jailer, stuck that match in his face, the only thing he was concerned about was making people suffer. Ever since then, he has been intrigued by light, but also wants to make people suffer. He goes through twists and turns until he accidentally kills the Queen (I suppose with ahead attack?). After he kills her and is trying to escape he looks back and sees the Princess looking at him, with an "I hate you." type of stare. After that, his only concerned with getting revenge on the Princess for staring at him in such a nasty way.
"Yes... yes, that is exactly what I intend to do. I will make the Princess suffer for the way she looked at me." (pg. 120)
The Big Ideas:
Story Connecters:
The book is connecting the lives of 4 characters. The Princess Pea, Miggery Sow, Despereaux, and Roscuro. If Gregory had never lit that match in Roscuro's face, he would have never been interested in light, thus never killing the Queen, thus not getting an "I hate you stare" from the Princess, thus not needing revenge, thus never having soup, spoons, bowls, and kettles banned. If Mig's mother had never died, then her father would never would have had to sell her, thus never making Mig want to be a princess, thus Mig never being confiscated from her owner, thus her never meeting Roscuro and evincing a plan for her to become Princess, thus not taking the Princess to the dungeon. If Despereaux was a normal mouse, then he would have never been reading the story, thus not hearing the music, thus not meeting the Princess, thus not being sent to the dungeon, thus never meeting Gregory, thus never escaping, thus never going on an adventure to save the Princess.
Lies:
While Roscuro and Mig are devising a plan to make MIg Princess, Roscuro says that the plan is to take the Princess tot he dungeon and have her give lessons to Mig on being a princess and then Mig gives Pea instructions on how to be Mig's sere vent. Then they switch spots and carry on. However, Roscuro has a different plan. He plans to take the Princess to the darks part of the entire dungeon and shackle her arms and legs tot he walls and leave her there forever, not even making Mig a princess at all. Roscuro is all about decide and doesn't really care what anybody else thinks.
Conflict and Problem:
A major conflict in the book is when Roscuro falls into the Queens soup and kills her. When Roscuro wanted light, he went upstairs o get it. He saw that there was a banquet going on and decided to go in to see it. There were so many shinny objects that he was in pure unadulterated awe of it all. The shiniest thing in the room, however, was the chandelier. It had beautiful and shinny work on it. The banquet was so loud and crowded that nobody noticed him. He climbed onto the chandelier and hung onto a part of it with two paws. When he gets spotted by the Pea and the Pea calls him a rat, he is so shocked by it that he falls and lands into the Queens pup bowl, which promptly kills her.
Another problem is when Despereaux escapes the dungeonand is being chased by Mig with a knife. The way he escaped was when Mig brought the food down to Gregory, the jailer, she brought a napkin. Gregory stuck Despereaux inside the napkin and then pretended to use it. Then she brought the tray back up and started to clear it when Despereaux fell out and Cook demanded Mig to kill it. So, Mig got a Knife and proceeded to attempt to kill Despereaux. She missed, but she did succeed in chopping off his tail.
Symbolic Image:
I used this image because soup represents all of the Kings sorrows. Because, intact, this is the way his wife is called. A rat, Roscuro had fallen from the chandelier into her soup and saved her so bad that she dropped dead. The King was so sad about this that the way he let out his anger and sadness was by banning soup, banning, spoons, banning bowls, and banning kettles.He also ordered all rats to death as well. This was nearly impossible, of course, considering there are thousands of rats in the dungeon and the dungeon was practically a maze. So much of a maze that some soldiers got lost in the dungeon and never came out.
New Words:
Mon Dieu: sentence: "Mon Dieu, just the one mouse baby?" (pg. 11) Definition: my God!
Obscenely: sentence: They are obscenely large ears..." (pg. 17) Definition: something that is offensive to someone; makes them look bad
Conform: sentence: Reader, you must know that and interesting fate awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform." (pg. 25) Definition: to comply with rules, standards, or laws
Thankless: sentence: Despereaux's brothers and sisters soon abandoned the thankless task of trying to educate him in the ways of being a mouse." (pg. 26) Definition:
Difficult or unpleasant and not likely to bring one pleasure or the appreciation of others.
Tribunal: sentence: "He must be brought before the tribunal." (pg. 35) Definition: a court of justice
Book Similarity:
This book reminds me of the classic case of a knight in shining armor, an evil doer, and a damsel in distress. In this style of story there is a beautiful maiden that gets kidnapped or locked away by an evil person or thing. Then, the knight, comes, defeats the evil doer, and saves the fair maiden. But before that, the knight must continue through a terrible adversity, such as in this tory, being locked in the dungeon. It is a good book that has good flavor. It has good flavor because of it's personification of rats and mice and their placements as a hero and a villain. I good comparison is Repunzel. She is trapped in a tower by and evil witch and is saved by a man. Another one is the story of Snow White. Snow white is put into a coma by the queen by way of a poisoned apple. When the Prince sees this, he kisses her, which revives her because she can only be woken up with a kiss from her true love, she awakens and they live happily ever after. All three of these stories are classics and are about love and beauty prevailing the evil and ugly. They are all enjoyed by children who love fantasy novels, such as Beauty sand the Beast, Snow White, The Sleeping Beauty, and Repunzel. Books like these are what make they youth happy because of their excitement and fantasy factor, such as 50 foot long hair or witches with poison apples.
The Tale of Despereaux
Author: Kate DiCamillo
The reason I choose this book is very uncomplicated. It is very intriguing, and the characters are very in-depth. The story has a great combination of good and evil, with a good sense of a romance. I could hardly put it down because of its ability to get into the story.
Genres:
This book can be classified in two different genres. These genres being speculative fiction and a romance. The Tale of Despereaux is a speculative fiction because it deals with the idea of personification to rats and mice. DiCamillo personifies these animals with the use of modern day english language. As most people know, mice and rats are incapable of speaking the language that we can understand. They can't even speak any language created by Homo Sapiens. They do have a language, but we cannot understand it. She also personifies the mice with her use of "The Mouse Council". This reminds most readers as a form of The Supreme Court Justice, which is in the American Government. Mice do not have a supreme intellect and cannot create a sort of government to do this, making this book a speculative fiction. This book is also a romance in the way of Despereaux, the main character who is a mouse, falls in love with the Princess, Pea (Princess Pea). The book would have no plot if Despereaux had not fallen in love with the Princess Pea. His love carries him throughout the story and compels his adventure, making this book, also, a romance. This obviously could never happen in real life, still making it a fiction
Summary:
This book actually is very good and keeps you drawn in. Despereaux Tilling, the protagonist, is a castle-born mouse who was born with his eyes opened, which was unusual. He also has very large ears and is undersized. On top of not looking like a normal mouse, he doesn't act like one either. He hates scurrying, and instead of chewing the glue off of paper in books, he reads the books instead. In particular, a book about a knight in shining armor that saves a princess, and it begins with "Once upon a time...", which is one of Despereaux inspirations. While re-reading this story, he hears a sound that he refers to as "honey". This sound is the King playing the guitar to his daughter, the Princess Pea. Despereaux is so intrigued by this that he exposes himself to them by sitting at the foot of the King. When Pea spots him, she starts talking to him. After talking for a few seconds, the King notices him and becomes enraged. So enraged that he starts stomping his foot at him. This scares Despereaux, so he runs back to a hole in a wall, and while running back, yells "My name is Despereaux!". After this, Despereaux falls in love with her. What he doesn't know, is that his brother, Furlough, has tuned him into the Mouse Council for exposing himself to a human. The next day, while Despereaux is reading his story again, Furlough makes him stop reading and talk to the Mouse Council. The Mouse Council says that he will have to accept the worst sentence, which is being sent down to the dungeon. Before being sent down to the dungeon, he gets a red string tied around his next. He is then lead to the dungeon to die. However, he meets the jailor, Gregory. Gregory, who has lived down there for decades, decides to derive a plan to help him escape. However, there are two other characters we must talk about. One of them being Chiaroscuro, also knows as Roscuro. Roscuro is a rat that lives in the dungeon, and rats from the dungeon are all about making people suffer. So one day, he decides to chew on the rope that is tied to Gregory the jailers ankle so Gregory can find his way through the conniving dungeon. Gregory becomes furious with him and hangs him by the tale. He teaches Roscuro a lesson by lighting a match and putting it infant of Roscuro's face, burning off on side of his whiskers. Since Roscuro is a rat and has lived in darkness his whole life, he has never seen light. This light sticks in his brain and he develops a dream to be able to get out of the dungeon and live in the light. However, he is hypnotized by his rat friend named Botticelli Remorso to not want to see the light and only to cause prisoners to suffer. So, when the next prisoner comes, light pores in, and Roscuro looks right into it. He dreams oaf light are somewhat revived, until Botticelli Remorso snaps him out of it. He then proceeds to convince the new prisoner that he is his friend after a little bit of time, he steals the only thing he has left, which is a red table cloth. He got this read table cloth in a trade he made with a man. He traded his daughter for a handful of cigarettes, a chicken, and the red table cloth. After that, Roscuro realizes that he doesn't to make people suffer. He wants light. So what he does is that he sneaks up the stairs out of the door and into the castle, where he is in awe of all of the light. It just so happens that at the same time, there is banquet going on. He looks inside the banquet room, where multiple things are bright and shinny. He then decides to climb up the chandelier in the banquet room that hangs over the dinning table. While up on it, he is spotted by the Princess Pea, who yells "A rat! A rat is hanging from the chandelier!". Nobody in the party heard her, instead of Roscuro, who was so hurt by the word "rat", that he feel from the chandelier. In fact, he fell from the chandelier right into the soup bowl of the queen, who loved soup so much thats he ate it fro every meal. As soon as she saw the rat in her soup, the queen yelled some strange noise an then screamed "There is a rat in my soup!" and promptly died on the spot. While the King was getting men to help revive her, Roscuro made his escape. However, he looked back. He looked back right at the princes, whose eyes looked like they said "Go back to the dungeon, go back to the darkness where you belong." His wife dieting hurt the King so bad that he had soup banned, bowls banned, spoons banned , and all rats to be killed. The word "rat" hurt Roscuro so much that he did not care about the light. All he cared about was revenge on the princess. He wanted revenge on pea. So he returned to the dungeon and plotted his revenge. There is one last character that is important, and that is Miggery Sow, also known as Mig. When Mig was a small girl, her mother died and her father traded her away to an abusive man who sowed her no love. All he wold do was make her cook food, clean his kettle, and tend to the sheep. He would hit her so much in the ear that she became hearing impaired and could hardly hear. One day while tending to the sheep, she saw the Queen, the King, and the Princess riding horses in the nearby fields. She was in such awe of the princess, that her new dream was to become a princess. After a few years, a man came in armor from the King to collect all spoons, bowls, and kettles, because they were all banned by the king. He also finds out that he traded Mig, which would make him the owner of Mig, which is illegal. So the man took Mig and all of her owners spoons, bowls, and his kettle to the castle, where Mig became a paid servant. She becomes friends with the princess. She also gets her new job, which is to bring food to the jailor, Gregory, in the dungeon. So, on her first day of this, she brings the food down to the jailor and he eats and. He uses his napkin and sends her away. While she is almost at the stairs, she encounter Roscuro, who convinces her that he can make her the princess. She takes him up with her and brings the tray back to the kitchen. While she is clearing the tray, she shakes out the napkin, and out tumbles Despereaux, who was hidden in the napkin. While trying to kill him she chops off his tail and he scurries away to the pantry and hides in there for ht night. Later that night, Roscuro creates a plan that will make Mig the princess. He says that they will wake the princess up and take her to the dungeon where Mig and Pea will switch rolls and Mig will be the prunes and Pea will be the servant. BUt his actual plan is to leave the princess in the darkest part of the dungeon forever. When Despereaux finds this out, he goes and gets the rest of the thimble of thread front he thread master and he also gets a needle. He then goes to the dungeon and begins his search for the Princess and become a night in shinning armor.
Characters:
Despereaux Tilling:
Despereaux is the protagonist in this book. He is unusually small, had big ears, and is easily frightened. He is also a compassionate character who wants nothing more then the love and admiration of his true love, Princess Pea. The way he falls in love with her is while he is re-reading his story, he hears a sound that he refers to as "honey". This sound is the King playing the guitar to his daughter, the Princess Pea. Despereaux is so intrigued by this that he exposes himself to them by sitting at the foot of the King. When Pea spots him, she starts talking to him. After talking for a few seconds, the King notices him and becomes enraged. So enraged that he starts stomping his foot at him. This scares Despereaux, so he runs back to a hole in a wall, and while running back, yells "My name is Despereaux!". Despereaux falls in love with the Princess and thats all he can think of.
"There is somebody who loves me, and I love her and that is the only thing that matters to me." (pg. 48)
Aside from being compassionate, Despereaux is also a brave character. After he escaped the dungeon he was brave enough to go back in, weapon in hand, and rescue the princess from the grasps of Mig and Roscuro. This is a big accomplishment for him, considering he is so skittish.
"No choice, no choice, no choice, no choice." (pg. 241)
Princess Pea:
The Princess is a very sweet character. She is kind natured towards Despereaux when she first meets him sitting at the foot of the king. She pats his head and is very gentle with him, unlike the King who the refused to play the guitar for Despereaux, saying that it is unfit for a king to be playing music for a mouse. And right he was, it was very strange...
"The Princess looked down at Despereaux. She smiled at him. And while her father played another song, a song about the deep purple falling over sleepy garden walls, the princess reached out and touched the top of the mouse's head." (pg. 30)
Chiaroscuro (Roscuro):
Roscuro seems like a very confused character. He doesn't really know why he wants until on of his character climaxes. Before Gregory, the jailer, stuck that match in his face, the only thing he was concerned about was making people suffer. Ever since then, he has been intrigued by light, but also wants to make people suffer. He goes through twists and turns until he accidentally kills the Queen (I suppose with ahead attack?). After he kills her and is trying to escape he looks back and sees the Princess looking at him, with an "I hate you." type of stare. After that, his only concerned with getting revenge on the Princess for staring at him in such a nasty way.
"Yes... yes, that is exactly what I intend to do. I will make the Princess suffer for the way she looked at me." (pg. 120)
The Big Ideas:
Story Connecters:
The book is connecting the lives of 4 characters. The Princess Pea, Miggery Sow, Despereaux, and Roscuro. If Gregory had never lit that match in Roscuro's face, he would have never been interested in light, thus never killing the Queen, thus not getting an "I hate you stare" from the Princess, thus not needing revenge, thus never having soup, spoons, bowls, and kettles banned. If Mig's mother had never died, then her father would never would have had to sell her, thus never making Mig want to be a princess, thus Mig never being confiscated from her owner, thus her never meeting Roscuro and evincing a plan for her to become Princess, thus not taking the Princess to the dungeon. If Despereaux was a normal mouse, then he would have never been reading the story, thus not hearing the music, thus not meeting the Princess, thus not being sent to the dungeon, thus never meeting Gregory, thus never escaping, thus never going on an adventure to save the Princess.
Lies:
While Roscuro and Mig are devising a plan to make MIg Princess, Roscuro says that the plan is to take the Princess tot he dungeon and have her give lessons to Mig on being a princess and then Mig gives Pea instructions on how to be Mig's sere vent. Then they switch spots and carry on. However, Roscuro has a different plan. He plans to take the Princess to the darks part of the entire dungeon and shackle her arms and legs tot he walls and leave her there forever, not even making Mig a princess at all. Roscuro is all about decide and doesn't really care what anybody else thinks.
Conflict and Problem:
A major conflict in the book is when Roscuro falls into the Queens soup and kills her. When Roscuro wanted light, he went upstairs o get it. He saw that there was a banquet going on and decided to go in to see it. There were so many shinny objects that he was in pure unadulterated awe of it all. The shiniest thing in the room, however, was the chandelier. It had beautiful and shinny work on it. The banquet was so loud and crowded that nobody noticed him. He climbed onto the chandelier and hung onto a part of it with two paws. When he gets spotted by the Pea and the Pea calls him a rat, he is so shocked by it that he falls and lands into the Queens pup bowl, which promptly kills her.
Another problem is when Despereaux escapes the dungeonand is being chased by Mig with a knife. The way he escaped was when Mig brought the food down to Gregory, the jailer, she brought a napkin. Gregory stuck Despereaux inside the napkin and then pretended to use it. Then she brought the tray back up and started to clear it when Despereaux fell out and Cook demanded Mig to kill it. So, Mig got a Knife and proceeded to attempt to kill Despereaux. She missed, but she did succeed in chopping off his tail.
Symbolic Image:
I used this image because soup represents all of the Kings sorrows. Because, intact, this is the way his wife is called. A rat, Roscuro had fallen from the chandelier into her soup and saved her so bad that she dropped dead. The King was so sad about this that the way he let out his anger and sadness was by banning soup, banning, spoons, banning bowls, and banning kettles.He also ordered all rats to death as well. This was nearly impossible, of course, considering there are thousands of rats in the dungeon and the dungeon was practically a maze. So much of a maze that some soldiers got lost in the dungeon and never came out.
New Words:
Mon Dieu: sentence: "Mon Dieu, just the one mouse baby?" (pg. 11) Definition: my God!
Obscenely: sentence: They are obscenely large ears..." (pg. 17) Definition: something that is offensive to someone; makes them look bad
Conform: sentence: Reader, you must know that and interesting fate awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform." (pg. 25) Definition: to comply with rules, standards, or laws
Thankless: sentence: Despereaux's brothers and sisters soon abandoned the thankless task of trying to educate him in the ways of being a mouse." (pg. 26) Definition:
Difficult or unpleasant and not likely to bring one pleasure or the appreciation of others.
Tribunal: sentence: "He must be brought before the tribunal." (pg. 35) Definition: a court of justice
Book Similarity:
This book reminds me of the classic case of a knight in shining armor, an evil doer, and a damsel in distress. In this style of story there is a beautiful maiden that gets kidnapped or locked away by an evil person or thing. Then, the knight, comes, defeats the evil doer, and saves the fair maiden. But before that, the knight must continue through a terrible adversity, such as in this tory, being locked in the dungeon. It is a good book that has good flavor. It has good flavor because of it's personification of rats and mice and their placements as a hero and a villain. I good comparison is Repunzel. She is trapped in a tower by and evil witch and is saved by a man. Another one is the story of Snow White. Snow white is put into a coma by the queen by way of a poisoned apple. When the Prince sees this, he kisses her, which revives her because she can only be woken up with a kiss from her true love, she awakens and they live happily ever after. All three of these stories are classics and are about love and beauty prevailing the evil and ugly. They are all enjoyed by children who love fantasy novels, such as Beauty sand the Beast, Snow White, The Sleeping Beauty, and Repunzel. Books like these are what make they youth happy because of their excitement and fantasy factor, such as 50 foot long hair or witches with poison apples.
Good Reads Review:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/395919953Quarter 2 RP: